⚡ December 1, 2014

Advice from Peg Bracken 🍗 and Isaac Asimov 🚀

Now that one holiday is over and one is about to begin, I will attempt the sprint that marks the housewife’s leap to the finish line. It’s the holidays! They have begun.

So now that we have finished Thanksgiving in an adequate fashion, it is time to really really shine for Christmas. There is the insane decorating challenge of an invading tree full of bare-naked need that must be covered in glittering good intentions. Handmade ornaments and stuff from the dollar store and a romp through my Pinterest site for inspiration and maybe it will all work out.

And in the spirit of the great Peg Bracken, author of the classic “I Hate to Cook Book,” I start many many projects at once and then work toward completion on each one whenever I feel that special urge – the one which wanes and ebbs with the tides.

The wrong cookbook to send to a bride. Illustrations by Hilary Knight.

It’s funny the stuff you read that sticks with you your whole life, and that particular book was one of my mentor-books. Peg – who also hated housework – says she would make herself do all-the-things all at once: take out the vacuum and leave it in the middle of the floor; strip the bed and powder down the bathroom counter with Comet and throw some veggies in the kitchen sink to wash and so forth. Everything you’ve started must be completed or you will be inconvenienced, mightily.

So, that sometimes works. Then there’s the Isaac Asimov method: have several different typewriters in the office and have a different book in progress in each one of them.

Notice the difference between a woman working all around the house and a man working in just an office-type room? It’s hard to be both.

And now I’m adding exercise and sewing to my project pile, just in time for the busy season between Thanksgiving and Christmas. I will write here when I can. 🚀